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Coronavirus In Australia: Tom Hanks Sends Typewriter To Bullied Australian Boy Named Corona

Comes after actor and his wife Rita Wilson spent two weeks in quarantine Down Under after testing positive for Covid-19.

Tom Hanks has sent a letter and a Corona brand typewriter to an Australian boy who wrote to him about being bullied over his name, Corona.

Corona De Vries, an eight-year-old from Queensland’s Gold Coast, wrote to the Hollywood star after he and his wife, Rita, had spent more than two weeks in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 in the Australian beach resort.

The boy had written to Hanks saying: “I heard on the news you and your wife had caught the coronavirus,” Channel 7 News reported. “Are you ok?”

He said he loved his name but people at school called him the coronavirus, which made him “sad and angry”.

“Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful!” Hanks replied in a letter typed on a Corona typewriter which he had taken to the Gold Coast.

“You know, you are the only person I’ve ever known to have the name Corona ― like the ring around the sun, a crown,” the double Oscar winner wrote to the boy.

“I thought this typewriter would suit you,” an image of the letter aired by Channel 7 News showed. “Ask a grown up how it works. And use it to write me back.”

Hanks hand wrote at the end: “P.S. You got a friend in ME!”

Last month Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson returned to Los Angeles following their two-week-long quarantine in Australia after they both tested positive for the coronavirus.

Hanks and Wilson, both 63, were among the first prominent figures to announce their positive diagnosis for the virus on March 11.

“We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches,” tweeted Hanks, who had been in Australia filming Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis Presley film (in which he portrays Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker).

“Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers too,” Hanks added at the time. “To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the Coronavirus, and were found to be positive.”

The couple were treated at a Gold Coast hospital for five days until they were discharged, followed by a period of self-isolation.

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